Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui - News in englishL'actualité du Viêt Nam2018-08-14T06:56:45+07:00Guénin Patrickurn:md5:11602DotclearTyphoon Bebinca forecast to hit northern Vietnam soonurn:md5:51d03293efe7e6fdfde1229723b62cb52018-08-14T08:56:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishclimateHanoityphoon<p>Bebinca, the fourth typhoon to hit Vietnam so far this year, is likely to
make landfall in its northern region from Quang Ninh province to Nam Dinh
province on Friday morning, according to the country's National Center for
Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting on Tuesday.</p> <p>On Friday, within a radius of some 90 km from the typhoon's eye, strong
winds will blow at speeds of 40-75 km per hour. From Wednesday night to Friday,
Vietnam's northern region and the northern part of the central region are
forecast to have heavy rain, said the center.</p>
<p>Vietnamese localities are maintaining close contact with captains and owners
of sea-going vessels and cruise ships, keeping strict surveillance on dykes and
reservoirs, and organizing evacuation of local residents in low-lying, coastal,
and landslide-prone areas, according to Vietnam's National Steering Committee
for Natural Disaster Prevention and Control.</p>
<p>Natural disasters, mainly typhoons, flash floods and landslides, killed or
left missing 78 people and injured 64 others, destroyed over 740 houses,
damaged 18,100 other houses, and damaged 12,600 hectares of rice and other
crops, causing property losses of around 1,468 billion Vietnamese dong (63.8
million U.S. dollars) in the first seven months of this year, said Vietnam's
General Statistics Office.</p>
<p>Xinhua Agency - August 14, 2018</p>A New Vietnam-Thailand Navy Pact ?urn:md5:929207139d498b9d5007ed1ea766b63f2018-08-14T08:52:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishmilitarynavalThailand<p>A new hydrographic agreement factored into recent discussions by both
sides.</p> <p>This week, the chief of the Thai navy’s hydrographic department paid a visit
to Vietnam in yet another official exchange between the two Southeast Asian
states. The interaction highlighted the ongoing activity between the navies of
the two Southeast Asian states within the wider strategic partnership that both
sides have forged over the years.</p>
<p>As I have noted before in these pages, the maritime domain has long factored
into wider cooperation between Vietnam and Thailand, which, though
characterized by animosity for much of the Cold War, has been warming somewhat
in recent years, with ties officially elevated to the level of a strategic
partnership back in 2013.</p>
<p>The relationship between the two navies in particular has grown to cover a
range of areas, from addressing challenges such as transnational crimes and
illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing to stepping up visits,
training, and channels of communication to broaden the scope of ongoing
collaboration.</p>
<p>Over the past week, the naval aspect of bilateral ties was in the spotlight
again when the director general of the Hydrographic Department of the Royal
Thai Navy, Winai Maneeprag, paid a visit to Vietnam. Winai’s visit saw him
participate in a series of engagements, including with the Vietnam Hydrographic
Bureau and the deputy chief of the general staff of the Vietnam People’s Army,
Pham Ngoc Minh.</p>
<p>As is customary with such engagements, both sides discussed aspects of the
full range of mechanisms that exist in the naval side of the relationship. As I
have noted previously, this includes joint patrols, port calls, and information
and intelligence sharing.</p>
<p>But both sides also indicated that they would look to boost collaboration in
the area of hydrographic cooperation more specifically. Vietnam’s defense
ministry said Minh called for Vietnam and Thailand to reach consensus and move
toward signing a hydrographic cooperation agreement between their two
navies.</p>
<p>Winai, for his part, addressed Vietnam’s hydrographic sector and expressed
his agreement in supporting Vietnam’s admission to the East Asia Hydrographic
Commission (EAHC), a regional hydrographic commission set up back in 1971.
Currently, there are six Southeast Asian states within the EAHC: Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand.</p>
<p>By Prashanth Parameswaran - The Diplomat - August 13, 2018</p>Bui Tin, colonel who accepted South Vietnam’s surrender, dies at 90urn:md5:011da756cd9e875a8d357ca39beec4552018-08-14T08:48:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishdissidentshistorymilitary<p>Bui Tin, a North Vietnamese colonel who had a prominent role in the Vietnam
War’s final moments but later fled the country and became an unlikely critic of
its ruling Communist Party, died on Saturday in France. He was 90.</p> <p>His death, in the Parisian suburb Montreuil, went unacknowledged by
Vietnam’s state-run news media but was confirmed on Monday by his longtime
friend Nguyen Van Huy, a fellow Vietnamese dissident who lives in France.</p>
<p>Mr. Huy said in a telephone interview that the exact cause of death was
unknown but that Colonel Tin had been in a coma and had received kidney
dialysis.</p>
<p>Colonel Tin personally accepted the surrender of South Vietnam in 1975. He
was also present at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, when Vietnamese
revolutionaries defeated French troops to secure their country’s
independence.</p>
<p>Though Colonel Tin was a high-ranking army officer and a onetime disciple of
Ho Chi Minh, the country’s founding president, he went into exile in France in
1990. For years afterward he urged his former party comrades to embrace
democracy and abandon what he saw as their moribund economic and political
ideology.</p>
<p>“His exile embodies the tragedy of Vietnam, and Vietnamese intellectuals in
particular,” said Tuong Vu, the author of “Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The
Power and Limits of Ideology,” “as they found themselves in the stranglehold of
a corrupt and violent regime that at one point appeared to represent their
aspirations.”</p>
<p>When Colonel Tin awoke on April 30, 1975, he probably did not expect to play
a direct role in a pivotal moment in Vietnamese history.</p>
<p>Later that morning, he rode aboard a North Vietnamese tank to the
presidential palace in Saigon. There, he walked inside to find Gen. Duong Van
Minh, the last president of South Vietnam, sitting in a conference room.</p>
<p>Colonel Tin was not a commander but the deputy editor of an army newspaper,
Quan Doi Nhan Dan. Because he was the highest-ranking North Vietnamese officer
in the room, however, it made sense for him to formally represent the winning
side.</p>
<p>“I have been waiting since early this morning to transfer power to you,”
General Minh told Colonel Tin, according to a description of the scene in the
2002 book “Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975,” by A. J. Langguth.</p>
<p>“There is no question of your transferring power,” was the colonel’s tart
reply. “Your power has crumbled. You cannot give up what you do not have.”</p>
<p>Colonel Tin then reassured General Minh that he had nothing to fear; it was
only the Americans who had been beaten, he said.</p>
<p>“If you are a patriot, consider this a moment of joy,” he said, before
making small talk about the general’s tennis game and orchid collection. “The
war for our country is over,” he added.</p>
<p>April 30 is now celebrated as Reunification Day in Vietnam. The day
commemorates the end of the war as well as the change of Saigon’s name to Ho
Chi Minh City.</p>
<p>Many South Vietnamese officials would be imprisoned for years after the war
in what the Communist Party called “re-education camps.” Nevertheless, debates
within the party would rage for decades over the role that Marxist-Leninist
dogma should play in the country’s postwar development.</p>
<p>During a trip to France in 1990 — just as Vietnam’s main patron, the Soviet
Union, was crumbling — Colonel Tin declared himself a political dissident and
complained that his country was troubled by “bureaucracy, irresponsibility,
egoism, corruption and fraud.”</p>
<p>But Mr. Vu, the historian, said that if Colonel Tin had hoped his defection
would bring broad political change in Vietnam, he miscalculated.</p>
<p>“He underestimated the resilience of Vietnamese Communism and the regime’s
tight control over its officials through a combination of fear and rewards for
compliance,” Mr. Vu said.</p>
<p>Bui Tin was born on Dec. 29, 1927, in Nam Dinh, a northern Vietnamese city
about 50 miles south of Hanoi.</p>
<p>Colonel Tin, whose father had been a mandarin in Vietnam’s last royal court,
became one of a small number of educated Vietnamese who rallied to Ho Chi
Minh’s revolutionary cause, Mr. Vu said.</p>
<p>Many of those intellectuals later turned against the Communist Party, which
dragged a unified Vietnam through disastrous postwar experiments in
collectivized agriculture.</p>
<p>Colonel Tin saw the Soviet bloc’s disintegration as the right moment for his
own political about-face. The Communist Party’s leadership “failed to bring
liberty and prosperity to Vietnam,” he wrote in The Washington Post in October
1991.</p>
<p>“Rather than improve the abysmal condition of the population, they have
blindly pursued sectarian policies designed to maintain their power,” he
added.</p>
<p>Even before his defection, Colonel Tin was known as something of a maverick.
Notably, he discovered and published Ho Chi Minh’s last will and testament,
proving that Ho had wanted his ashes scattered around Vietnam. The discovery
exposed what Colonel Tin said was the fraud behind the party’s decision to
build a mausoleum in Hanoi for the country’s founder.</p>
<p>Colonel Tin might someday have become chief of the Communist Party “if he
had only thought about himself,” said Vo Van Tao, a Vietnamese political
activist in the southern city of Nha Trang. “But he was an independent thinker
with a democratic outlook who disagreed strongly with the regime.”</p>
<p>Mr. Huy, the colonel’s friend, said that Colonel Tin is survived by his
wife, Le Thi Kim Chung; a daughter, Bui Bach Lien; a son, Bui Xuan Vinh; four
siblings; and five grandchildren.</p>
<p>Today, Vietnam is a haven for foreign investors seeking a place with cheap
labor and a relatively stable political environment. And despite steady waves
of online dissent from the Vietnamese public, the party has maintained its grip
on power.</p>
<p>It apparently never forgave Colonel Tin, who forged a friendly relationship
with the United States soon after going into exile.</p>
<p>In 1991, Colonel Tin traveled to Washington and testified before a Senate
committee that dealt with American prisoners of war. He also met with Senator
John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war in Hanoi, to discuss what the
senator later described as their “mutual interest in promoting democracy in
Vietnam.”</p>
<p>After Colonel Tin spoke to the committee, Mr. McCain approached him and
stretched out his palm for a handshake. He got a hug instead.</p>
<p>By Mike Ives - The New York Times - August 13, 2018</p>Bui Tin, Vietnam communist war hero turned dissident, dies aged 90urn:md5:53bba93fd61ca3b70998b363475f7c932018-08-13T09:20:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishdissidentshistorymilitary<p>Bui Tin, a former army journalist, had lived in exile in France since 1990
when he defected during a trip</p> <p>A Vietnamese former colonel and revolutionary war hero who became
disillusioned with the communist regime and defected, becoming one of its most
vocal and influential critics, died in France at age 90.</p>
<p>Bui Tin passed away of kidney failure in hospital in a Paris suburb early
Saturday, his friend and a relative confirmed, after several weeks of declining
health.</p>
<p>“The hospital told me that Tin passed away after falling into a coma,” close
acquaintance Tuong An said on Sunday. A relative in Hanoi also confirmed his
death.</p>
<p>Tin, a former army journalist, had lived in exile in France since 1990 when
he defected during a trip for a meeting organised by l’Humanite communist
newspaper in Paris.</p>
<p>It was an unlikely twist of fate for a man who spent much of his life
fighting for Vietnam’s independence – first from French colonial rulers and
later from US-backed anti-communist fighters in the south.</p>
<p>He was just a teenager when, full of fervour, he joined the army aligned
with Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary movement that would eventually expel the
French in the epic battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.</p>
<p>Several other milestones would follow during his storied military
career.</p>
<p>On April 30, 1975, he was among the first soldiers that entered the
Presidential Palace in the former southern capital Saigon – later renamed Ho
Chi Minh City – capping a long and bloody war that left some three million
Vietnamese dead.</p>
<p>Tin worked as an army reporter during much of the war, and later said he met
US navy pilot John McCain in the prison nicknamed the “Hanoi Hilton” where the
American POW spent five and half years after his jet was shot down in the
city.</p>
<p>The two men would meet again in 1991, when Tin testified to a US Senate
committee on POW and MIA affairs, at the end of which he famously hugged the
man he once considered a foe.</p>
<p>“When I reached for his hand he responded by embracing me, which I didn’t
mind, as cameras recorded the moment for the next day’s papers, which ran the
picture with variations on the caption FORMER ENEMIES EMBRACE,” McCain wrote in
his 2002 book Worth the Fighting For.</p>
<p>As an army reporter, who later held top jobs at state newspapers, Tin spent
much of his career brushing up with war heroes like General Vo Nguyen Giap but
– like Giap -became disillusioned with the cause he dedicated so much of his
life to.</p>
<p>He believed the Communist Party had drifted from the ideals of the
revolution’s founding father – calling its leaders arrogant and corrupt – and
once said the party “hides its misdeeds in the shadow of Ho Chi Minh”.</p>
<p>He spent much of his time in France writing about politics and current
affairs in his birth country and friends say he was a journalist, and activist,
up to the day he died.</p>
<p>Days before he fell ill last month, his internet went down so he wrote an
article by hand calling for multi-party democracy in Vietnam that he asked a
friend to post.</p>
<p>“When I visited him in the hospital, he was very weak, but the first
question he asked me was whether his article had been published or not,” An
said.</p>
<p>“He was a real journalist until the end of his life.”</p>
<p>He came under fire from fellow activists for his former ties to the
communists, but An said he remained kind and tolerant even of his harshest
critics, having dedicated his life to his political ideals.</p>
<p>“He lived for democracy in Vietnam,” she said.</p>
<p>One of his relatives said the family did not pay much attention to his
controversial political leanings – which leaders in the one-party state are
notoriously intolerant of – and instead respected him as an elder and a
leader.</p>
<p>“The family didn’t take (his activism) too seriously, everyone has their own
ideology,” the relative said, requesting anonymity.</p>
<p>Born in 1927 near Hanoi, Tin was one of 10 siblings and leaves behind two
children – a daughter in Hanoi and a son in Canada.</p>
<p>Friends said a funeral service will be organised in France.</p>
<p>Agence France Presse - August 13, 2018</p>Consumer goods, property most attractive sectors for acquisition in Vietnamurn:md5:dfdbf7fcbfa56dd2cadec8f1c88012952018-08-13T09:15:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englisheconomygoodsreal estate<p>The most promising sectors for mergers and acquisitions in Vietnam are
consumer goods and real estate, says a global advisory firm.</p> <p>Food and beverage (F&amp;B) tops the list followed by pharmaceuticals and
real estate in joint second position and fast moving consumer goods, KPMG said
in its latest outlook report for M&amp;A released at the Vietnam M&amp;A Forum
(MAF) 2019 in HCMC last week.</p>
<p>The firm came up with the report following a survey of more than 300
professionals working for private equity firms, securities companies and
M&amp;A advisory firms besides company owners.</p>
<p>F&amp;B takes the lead thanks to a booming young middle class, stable
economic growth of 6.5 percent and increasing exposure to new concepts and
cultures especially influenced by globalization.</p>
<p>As for pharmaceuticals and life sciences, the survey found that while some
foreign companies in this industry could see M&amp;A as a faster means of
obtaining the necessary licenses in Vietnam, several other arguments were also
made in support of this trend: such as the government’s plan to simplify
licensing policies and reforming regulatory frameworks, and the increasing
demand for healthcare.</p>
<p>Besides, the country’s rapid urbanization rate means the real estate sector
will continue to remain a magnet for investment, especially the residential and
hospitality segments.</p>
<p>A report of the MAF 2019 stated that foreign investors in the consumer goods
sector do not just have an eye for local brands but also their distribution
networks.</p>
<p>“Thai and South Korean investors have expressed interest in Vietnam’s
consumer goods sector since M&amp;A deals will help them access established
channels to distribute Thai and Korean goods in the Vietnamese market,” said
the report.</p>
<p>As for the real estate sector, it noted foreign investors are interested in
M&amp;A because it often takes long to complete procedures for new real estate
projects in Vietnam, and acquiring local firms would be a shortcut.</p>
<p>Besides, the availability of land for new projects is limited, with local
firms already buying up most of them, making it difficult for foreign investors
to strike out on their own.</p>
<p>MAF 2019 data showed that the total M&amp;A value in Vietnam last year was
$10.2 billion, the highest ever and 175 percent up from 2016.</p>
<p>In the first six months of this year the figure was $3.55 billion, up 55
percent.</p>
<p>Consumer goods and real estate accounted for the biggest slices of the
M&amp;A pie last year, with 57 percent and 27 percent, respectively.</p>
<pre>
In H1 this year real estate surged to the top, accounting for 66.75 percent, followed by finance-banking with 19.06 percent.
</pre>
<p>Experts at the forum said this year the M&amp;A value could be lower at
$6.5-6.9 billion.</p>
<p>Last year it had been boosted by the biggest ever divestment deal in the
country when Thai Beverage paid nearly $5 billion for a 54 percent stake in
Vietnam’s top brewer Sabeco.</p>
<p>KPMG’s survey found that Japan, South Korea and China would continue to be
the top sources of M&amp;A deals in the next three years.</p>
<p>Warrick Cleine, chairman and CEO of KPMG in Vietnam and Cambodia, said the
wave of investments from Asia into Vietnam would be huge and the Comprehensive
and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) that Vietnam
signed in March with 10 other Asia-Pacific countries would make Vietnam's
market even more attractive to investors from Japan and South Korea.</p>
<p>Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue told the forum the government is
amending and finalizing policies related to management of state-owned
equity.</p>
<p>The government will continue to push with its equitization of state-owned
firms and tighten up rules to ensure those that have already launched IPOs list
on the stock market, he said.</p>
<p>The government is seeking to make things easier for investors. “The target
is to cut 30-50 percent of business procedures within this year. Now 15 percent
of such procedures has been axed. We will do the same with specialized
inspection procedures to improve the investment environment in Vietnam to make
it easier for the establishment of new firms as well as M&amp;A activities,”
the deputy PM added.</p>
<p>Pham Van Thinh, CEO of advisory firm Deloitte Vietnam, said as the
government continues to facilitate foreign investment and make the economy more
open, Vietnam would remain an attractive market for the next five to 10
years.</p>
<p>However, as most companies in Vietnam are small or medium-sized, which means
many of them do not have strategic policies for long-term development, there is
not much scope for strong growth in M&amp;A in future, he said.</p>
<p>Dominic Scriven, executive chairman of Dragon Capital, one of the top
investment funds in Vietnam, said he is optimistic about the M&amp;A prospects
in Vietnam.</p>
<p>But he noticed three factors that should be sorted out to bolster the
M&amp;A landscape: the government’s policy to attract foreign investment, a
change in attitude of local firms many of whom still want to handle everything
themselves and do not look at M&amp;A as a solution to become stronger and how
effectively Vietnam can handle possible disputes between partners in M&amp;A
deals.</p>
<p>By Minh Nga &amp; Vien Thong - VnExpress.net - August 13, 2018</p>Vietnam is most vulnerable in Southeast Asia to trade warurn:md5:b3bf22ccd61cde7dc57e3160d258d3432018-08-13T09:11:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englisheconomyGDP growthUnited States of America<p>Indonesia and Philippines also face big risks</p> <p>Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia risk incurring serious damage from
the spiralling trade war between the United States and China, with Hanoi the
most exposed because of its high level of exports, according to analysis by FT
Confidential Research.</p>
<p>The biggest five ASEAN economies are generally better insulated against
market turmoil than they were during the &quot;taper tantrum&quot; of 2013, a wave of
panic selling induced by a hint from the U.S. Federal Reserve that it would
reduce monetary stimulus. But they are unprepared for an extended period of
reduced global demand, which could happen as a result of tit-for-tat
protectionist measures imposed by the U.S. and China on each other.</p>
<p>While export-driven Vietnam is the most directly exposed to a global
slowdown, the fragile current accounts of the Philippines and Indonesia leave
these countries vulnerable to balance of payments crises.</p>
<p>The White House has so far imposed 25% direct tariffs on $34 billion in
annual imports from China, with another $16 billion to follow on Aug. 23, and
the Chinese government has responded in kind. If this is the extent of the
trade fight, then the ASEAN big five economies need not worry.</p>
<p>However, these may be only the opening salvos. The U.S. administration is
considering levying duties of between 10% and 25% on another $200 billion of
imports, and President Donald Trump has threatened to tax all $500 billion in
shipments from China. He has also picked trade fights with the EU and other
U.S. allies.</p>
<p>As bluster has given way to action, the threat of an all-out global trade
war is now being taken seriously. Few countries would be immune to its
effects.</p>
<p>Vietnam's roaring economy - it grew at an annualized pace of just over 7% in
the second quarter - is by far the most export-dependent among the ASEAN big
five. For the 12 months ending March 2018, the country shipped goods equivalent
to 99.2% of gross domestic product.</p>
<p>To a much greater extent than its Asean-5 peers, Vietnam has relied on
exports for growth over the past decade, nearly quadrupling its shipments
between 2008 and 2017. The country's annual exports have reached $226 billion,
just $17 billion behind Thailand, the regional leader</p>
<p>At $43.7 billion, Vietnam's annual exports to the U.S. rank first among the
ASEAN five, making the country sensitive to softening U.S. consumer demand. It
is sales to the U.S., EU and other developed markets, and not to China, that
have propelled Vietnam's growth over the past decade.</p>
<p>The threat of serious trade conflict is adding to the pressure on emerging
markets caused by the strengthening U.S. dollar. Although the ASEAN five have
not been hit as hard as Turkey or Argentina, equities in all five countries
have sold off sharply, with only Vietnam holding on to many of last year's
gains.</p>
<p>The Philippine peso has been the worst performer among the ASEAN five
currencies, shedding more than 7.3% so far this year against the dollar,
followed by the Indonesian rupiah at 6.1%. Quietly, the Vietnamese central bank
has devalued the dong, which is fixed to the dollar via a crawling peg. The
dong is down 1.5% so far this year, and the government could take more
aggressive action if exports slow significantly.</p>
<p>Some currency weakness may help cushion export-focused economies such as
Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. They could also benefit in the longer run if
foreign direct investment shifts away from China as more companies hedge
against the risk of trade action. Likewise, tariffs on goods produced within
its borders will encourage China to accelerate offshoring to less expensive
ASEAN economies.</p>
<p>However, for the less export-reliant economies of the Philippines and
Indonesia, whose currencies have declined the most rapidly, depreciation means
faster-growing current account deficits and greater inflationary pressure.</p>
<p>The Philippines and Indonesia have been running persistent current account
deficits, making them more susceptible to currency depreciation and - in
extreme scenarios - balance of payments crises. For now, their import cover is
sufficient, with foreign exchange reserves equal to 8.8 months of imports for
the Philippines and 8.1 for Indonesia.</p>
<p>The situation in the Philippines is the more precarious. The economy is
being squeezed by a deteriorating trade balance and decelerating remittance
growth. The country has run a current account deficit since late 2016, reducing
foreign currency reserves by 10.7% from their September 2016 peak.</p>
<p>Worse, the trend is accelerating. Almost half of the country's reserve
losses have come in the past six months, a pace that could become unsustainable
if external conditions worsen. The Philippines also has the ASEAN 5's highest
dependency on dollar-denominated energy imports, so a weaker peso is increasing
its import bill.</p>
<p>Inflation compounds such challenges. The consumer price index for the
Philippines has increased every month so far this year because of rising oil
prices and a rice shortage, growing 5.7% in June from 3.3% in 2017.</p>
<p>In Indonesia, inflation is currently under control, but the country has run
the largest current account deficit among the ASEAN 5 since 2012, and its
foreign exchange reserves dropped 8.1% in the first half alone. Indonesia may
have a low overall reliance on exports, but it ships huge amounts of coal, palm
oil and other commodities, so a global demand shock would have an outsized
impact on its trade balance.</p>
<p>In a full-blown U.S.-China trade war, there will be nowhere to hide - but
some Asean-5 countries are more exposed than others.</p>
<p>By FT Confidential Research - Nikkei Asian Review - August 13, 2018</p>Vietnam's Vinfast in deal with Siemens for technology to make electric busesurn:md5:ef2966dd2d6ae491dd85f1e900b398912018-08-13T09:05:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishelectricitytransportation<p>VinFast Trading and Production LLC has signed two contracts with Siemens
Vietnam, a unit of Siemens AG, for the supply of technology and components to
manufacture electric buses in the Southeast Asian country.</p> <p>VinFast, a unit of Vietnam’s biggest private conglomerate, Vingroup JSC,
said on Monday the deals will enable it to launch the first electric bus by the
end of 2019.</p>
<p>“Electric buses are an essential element of sustainable urban public
transportation systems,” Siemens Vietnam President and CEO Pham Thai Lai said
in the statement.</p>
<p>VinFast will also produce electric motorcycles, electric cars and gasoline
cars from its $1.5-billion factory being built in Haiphong City, it said.</p>
<p>In June, General Motors Co agreed to transfer its Vietnamese operation to
VinFast, which will also exclusively distribute GM’s Chevrolet cars in
Vietnam.</p>
<p>By Khanh Vu - Reuters - August 13, 2018</p>Vietnam poised to become top player in ocean aquacultureurn:md5:f5b5223f2b219c094cab4ae1021dcc8d2018-08-10T09:21:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishfoodseafood<p>Vietnam has set an ambitious goal of becoming a leading country in
aquaculture – specifically in the productive development of its coastal marine
environment.</p> <p>Currently ranked as the fourth-largest producer of seafood from aquaculture,
behind China, Indonesia, and India, Vietnam produced 3.84 million metric tons
(MT) of farmed seafood in 2017. That was more than 53 percent of Vietnam’s
total seafood production of 7.23 MT, which itself represented an increase of
5.2 percent year-on-year over Vietnam’s total from 2016.</p>
<p>Vietnam’s government and industry stakeholders have recently taken a more
serious interest in the development of Vietnam’s aquaculture sector, Tran Dinh
Luan, the deputy director of Vietnam’s Fisheries General Department, told a
workshop in Hanoi in early July.</p>
<p>The workshop, co-organized by the Vietnam Seaculture Association, Vietnam’s
Fisheries General Department, and the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC),
centered around Vietnam’s draft national strategy for marine aquaculture
development through 2030. The strategy, with an addendum that proposes a vision
through 2050, was prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development
and will be submitted to Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc for final
approval.</p>
<p>The plan calls for the country to implement – on a trial basis – several
policies designed to encourage industrial sea farming, particularly in offshore
areas, by 2020. The plan aims to double the farmed output from the sea by 2020
to 750,000 MT total, comprising 200,000 MT of fish, 400,000 MT of mollusks and
150,000 MT of seaweed, according to the draft strategy.</p>
<p>Luan said while sea farming in Vietnam is still at its early stages of
development, the strategy is designed to develop the whole production chain of
the sector at larger and more advanced levels. In its latter stages of
execution, the plan calls for production to rise to 1.75 million MT by 2030,
and to three million MT by 2050.</p>
<p>As a result, Vietnam hopes to gain USD 1.5 billion (EUR 1.29 billion) from
exports of its farmed marine products by 2020. That total is estimated to grow
by between USD 5 billion and 8 billion (EUR 4.3 billion and 6.9 billion) by
2030 and more than USD 10 billion (EUR 8.6 billion) by 2050. The country aims
to become the leading player in the Southeast Asia and Asia in marine
aquaculture sector, with the eventual goal of ranking in the top five in the
world in terms of output and value of farmed marine products exports by 2050,
according to the draft strategy.</p>
<p>The plan also calls for a more intensive focus on developing trading
relationships and technology and training partnerships. The country aims to
deepen ties with top countries in terms of sea farming, including Norway,
Denmark, Japan, the U.S., and Australia. Investors from these countries will be
welcomed to transfer modern aquaculture technologies to Vietnam. Vietnam will
also look to import high-quality fingerlings from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan
and Australia, the draft strategy showed.</p>
<p>Last year, Vietnamese aquaculture produced 2.69 million MT of fish and
723,800 MT of shrimp, data released by Vietnam’s Ministry of Agriculture and
Rural Development shows. However, output from sea farming remain modest,
producing a total of 377,000 MT of farmed marine products, including fish,
mollusk, lobster, crab, and seaweed in 2017.</p>
<p>Nguyen Huu Dung, the president of the Vietnam Seaculture Association, told
SeafoodSource sea farming has not developed much yet in Vietnam, but “it is
very promising.”</p>
<p>With a coastline of more than 3,260 kilometers (2,026 miles) and numerous
islands and bays, Vietnam has huge geographic potential for aquaculture, Luan
said. Its exclusive economic zone accounts for nearly 30 percent of the South
China Sea. In particular, the waters in the country’s west, with fewer storms,
and the deep waters in the central region are ideal for large-scale farming of
marine fish species.</p>
<p>Pangasius and shrimp are Vietnam’s two major aquaculture products. They are
mainly raised in Mekong Delta, though other areas across the country are also
home to aquaculture development. Developing ocean aquaculture will bring
greater diversity and balance to the country’s seafood production, especially
if Vietnam can apply advanced sea farming technologies in deeper waters, Dung
said.</p>
<p>Currently, there are about 50,000 households farming marine products across
the country. Most are independent, small-scale farmers using old equipment and
outdated practices. But a number of companies – particularly those operating
near Phu Quoc Island in the south and Van Phong Bay in the central region –
have scaled up industrial farming practices using modern technologies from
Norway.</p>
<p>Initial results showed that these sea farming models can be applied in other
sea areas of the country, Dung said.</p>
<p>By Toan Dao - SeaFoodSource - August 9, 2018</p>Vietnam to limit or stop issuing new licenses for foreign banksurn:md5:dd92c810739b81dccedbdfeb190ad24b2018-08-10T08:54:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishbankforeigners<p>Vietnam will limit or possibly stop issuing new licenses for the
establishment of wholly-owned foreign banks in the country, Deputy Prime
minister Vuong Dinh Hue said on Thursday.</p> <p>“Soon, Vietnam will strictly limit, or may stop issuing news licenses for
100-percent foreign owned banks in the country,” Hue said in a statement posted
on the government website.</p>
<p>Hue said foreign investors will still be allowed to buy and own existing
weak local banks, according to the statement.</p>
<p>Vietnam has so licensed around 10 wholly-foreign-owned banks, such as HSBC
Vietnam, Standard Chartered Vietnam, Hong Leong Vietnam, CIMB Vietnam,
according to the State bank of Vietnam.</p>
<p>Reuters - August 9, 2018</p>Vietnam’s airport infrastructure and service quality need improvement to meet growing demandurn:md5:070cb7b96224ee1c5f8d0c8a7aa9662d2018-08-09T08:55:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishairportinfrastructures<p>As Vietnam is forecast to become the world’s fifth fastest-growing aviation
market in terms of international passengers and cargo, measures are needed to
resolve infrastructure bottlenecks and improve service quality in order to meet
the development needs.</p> <p><strong>Infrastructure overload</strong></p>
<p>Many experts agree that Vietnam’s airport infrastructure is in a state of
overload as a series of airports are facing the likelihood of being
overburdened once again soon after they have been upgraded and expanded.</p>
<p>According to the Airports Corporation of Vietnam (ACV), Noi Bai, Tan Son
Nhat, Cam Ranh, Cat Bi, Phu Quoc and Lien Khuong Airports are all operating
beyond their design capacities.</p>
<p>A great number of opportunities are opening in the sky but if the ground
infrastructure challenges are not resolved, Vietnam’s aviation sector could
repeat Indonesia’s failure. When many airlines are in service, the overburdened
airport infrastructure will create great pressure on management, which could
lead to safety issues and widespread flight delays and cancellations.</p>
<p>Vietnam currently has 21 airports in operation with a combined capacity of
75 million passengers a year, just equivalent to Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur
Airport and a little more than Singapore Changi Airport’s capacity of 50
million passengers.</p>
<p>At present, foreign visitors who wish to arrive in Quy Nhon, Quang Binh and
Phu Quoc usually have to take at least two flights with one connection from
major airports such as Noi Bai and Tan Son Nhat.</p>
<p>Key airport hubs are overburdened, causing long waiting times for flight
check-in, while most smaller local airports are operating at a loss due to
scant passengers and are difficult to upgrade to international airports in
order to attract foreign tourists.</p>
<p>Under the national aviation development plan until 2020, with a view to
2030, Vietnam will make the top four largest markets in ASEAN in terms of
passengers by 2030. Vietnam’s passenger growth is expected to reach an annual
average of 16% until 2020 and 8% over the next ten years.</p>
<p>To catch up with this strong growth, the government has approved a plan for
a total of 26 airports, including those already in operation, at a cost of
US$10.5 billion. 11 projects are underway, of which seven are scheduled for
completion in the next three years.</p>
<p>Increasing airport capacity and fleet numbers over the next three years will
be the key to opening new development opportunities for Vietnam’s aviation
market.</p>
<p>While the state budget is limited, calling for the private sector’s
investment is considered a feasible solution for Vietnam to attain a modern
airport infrastructure system.</p>
<p>Therefore, economic experts state that a breakthrough in airport
infrastructure is needed and the private sector’s participation in management
could address the current shortcomings to improve service quality.</p>
<p><strong>Huge potential</strong></p>
<p>According to the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam, there are
currently five airport infrastructure projects with the private sector’s
investment which are underway or are awaiting approval, including Van Don, Cam
Ranh, Phan Thiet, Cat Bi and Chu Lai Airports.</p>
<p>It will take a long time to recover the investment in aviation
infrastructure but it will bring many benefits to the community, boost regional
economic growth and improve the competitive edge of both the investors and the
country.</p>
<p>According to a report by the US Commerce Department, with a growing GDP and
population of 90 million, Vietnam is forecast to be one of the fastest-growing
aviation markets in Southeast Asia over the next 10 - 20 years.</p>
<p>Dr Ngo Tri Long shares the same view that Vietnam’s aviation market still
has a lot of room for development. In the Southeast Asian region, Vietnam has
the third largest population but only ranks fifth in domestic transport
infrastructure.</p>
<p>Vietnam’s GDP growth is forecast to continue topping the region in the years
ahead, meaning there is still much room for the domestic aviation market to
grow.</p>
<p>The attractive market is reflected in the impressive revenue and profit
growth of airlines in recent years. In 2017, the total passengers of Vietnam
Airlines grew by 10%, while those of Vietjet Air surged by 22%. Vietnam
Airlines plans to increase its fleet to 116 in 2018 and Vietjet to 200 by
2023.</p>
<p>Experts on the private sector have stated that, compared with many regional
countries, Vietnam is falling behind in terms of aviation liberalisation. For
example, the population of Thailand is equivalent to just 70% of Vietnam’s but
the country has roughly 40 airports, more than ten airlines and triple the
number of international passengers of Vietnam.</p>
<p>Therefore, it is necessary to make it easier to grant air transport licenses
and encourage more investment in airport development and operations.</p>
<p>Recently, property developer FLC has entered the market by establishing a
new airline called Bamboo Airways, which plans to launch its first flight in
October and primarily focuses on key tourist destinations.</p>
<p>The increase in the number of airlines is expected to change the structure
of the aviation market and open more high-end markets.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, experts state that the air transport market is not easy to
conquer because it requires a huge amount of investment, advanced technologies
and is regulated by many stringent rules.</p>
<p>New airlines should enter the niche markets and utilise small airports in
order to avoid competition from larger carriers and tap into their internal
strengths.</p>
<p>Nhan Dan - August 8 , 2018</p>Vietnam’s GDP projected to grow 6.83% in 2018urn:md5:433a669f54db7b99838f8a9d159f05782018-08-09T08:50:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englisheconomyGDP growth<p>Vietnam’s gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow 6.83 per cent in
2018, almost unchanged from 6.8 per cent in the same period last year.</p> <p>he forecast was made by the National Centre for Socio-economic Information
and Forecast (NCIF) under the Ministry of Planning and Investment, which
organised a seminar on Wednesday in Hanoi on the theme “Vietnam ’s economic
prospects for the last six months of 2018 and the impact of US-China trade
tensions”.</p>
<p>The seminar reviewed the country’s macroeconomic situation during the first
six months of 2018 and discussed likely challenges in the second half as well
as the impact of external factors, particularly US-China trade tensions, on
Vietnam’s economy.</p>
<p>The NCIF expects the GDP growth rate in the third and fourth quarter to
reach 6.72 per cent and 6.56 per cent, respectively.</p>
<p>Average annual inflation is forecast to be in the range of 4 to 4.2 per
cent.</p>
<p>“In the second half of this year, Vietnam will still have to face many
challenges, including pressure from the appreciation of the US dollar against
other currencies after the US Federal Reserves raised interest rates on June 14
and signalled two more hikes to come later in 2018,” said Dang Duc Anh, head of
NCIF’s Analysis and Forecast Division.</p>
<p>He said American trade protectionism and fluctuations in the prices of basic
commodities and energy will affect Vietnam ’s economic growth as the pressure
to stabilise exchange rates and inflation is increasing.</p>
<p>Vietnam News - August 09, 2018</p>Vietnam deputy police minister sacked amid corruption crackdownurn:md5:d847cc2a836d3cc5f40e2bed91fa67552018-08-09T08:47:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishcorruptiongovernment<p>Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Wednesday fired the deputy
police minister, the highest ranking police official to be removed in a
corruption crackdown in the Communist-ruled country, the government said.</p> <p>Bui Van Thanh, Deputy Minister of Public Security, was fired for “very
serious violations”, Phuc said in a statement without elaborating. The decision
took effect immediately.</p>
<p>Vietnamese authorities have arrested dozens of officials and business
figures in a crackdown mixed with political intrigue in the one-party communist
state.</p>
<p>The Communist party late last month stripped Thanh, 60, of all of his party
credentials saying he violated regulations on state secrets and illegally
issued documents on land management, the government said in a separate
statement.</p>
<p>Thanh was also accused of illegally issuing a diplomatic passport to
business tycoon Phan Van Anh Vu, who was sentenced to seven years in prison at
a closed trial more than a week ago, convicted of deliberate disclosure of
state secrets.</p>
<p>“Thanh’s violations caused very serious consequences, affecting the prestige
of the party, the police force and causing public anger,” according to the
government statement.</p>
<p>Phuc also demoted Thanh from Lieutenant General to Colonel, according to the
government statement.</p>
<p>Last week, a military court sentenced the first military official to go on
trial in the corruption crackdown to 12 years in jail.</p>
<p>By Khanh Vu &amp; Mai Nguyen - Reuters - August 8, 2018</p>Vietnam restructures public security ministryurn:md5:b7563dee9a23965196c70eb26213c8f12018-08-08T09:23:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishgovernmentmilitary<p>Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security has undergone a major restructuring,
with six general departments scrapped and many divisions merged to build a
&quot;lean machine.&quot;</p> <p>The restructuring of the Ministry of Public Security was carried out to
build a focused and efficient system. Photo by VnExpress/Ba Do Vietnam's
Ministry of Public Security has undergone a major restructuring, with six
general departments scrapped and many divisions merged to build a &quot;lean
machine.&quot;</p>
<p>The merger of divisions with similar functions has reduced the ministry’s
intermediate-level departments by 60 to just over 50, while nearly 300
sub-divisions have been cut.</p>
<p>At the provincial level, a total of 20 firefighting departments have been
merged into their respective provincial or municipal police departments. In
total, the restructuring cut more than 1,500 subdivisions of the provincial
police departments.</p>
<p>Leaders of the scrapped general departments would receive new positions that
suit their expertise or be assigned to the intermediate level departments as
directors.</p>
<p>In Vietnam’s office hierarchy, general departments come directly under the
ministry, followed by intermediate-level departments that are above
municipal/provincial level departments, which have divisions and
subdivisions.</p>
<p>The sweeping changes were announced by Major General Luong Tam Quang, Chief
of Staff of the Ministry of Public Security, at a press conference on
Tuesday.</p>
<p>He also said that the ministry has restructured its press units and agencies
and established a new People's Public Security Communications Department.</p>
<p>The ministry's restructuring was carried out under a directive issued by the
Politburo, the Communist Party's top decision-making body, in order to &quot;build a
focused and lean machine&quot; designed for &quot;effective work.&quot;</p>
<p>The restructuring also includes plans to streamline the system by reducing
staff numbers. In late 2016, the ministry stopped recruiting new officers and
limited the number of students that enrolled in its military schools.</p>
<p>By Ba Do - VnExpress.net - August 7, 2018</p>Vietnam state company listings lose steam under stricter rulesurn:md5:20881bd68a881766dcfabbc183b8c52f2018-08-08T09:16:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishcompanyeconomy<p>EVN Finance flop fuels concern as only a fifth of eligible companies have
gone public</p> <p>Vietnamese state-owned enterprises are making slow progress on opening up to
private investment, with most having missed their deadline for listing on the
local stock market -- a key part of the government's plan for modernizing the
Southeast Asian country's economy.</p>
<p>Of 747 state enterprises that had completed their initial public offerings
as of August 2017, only 150 had floated shares on local stock exchanges as of
the start of this month, according to the Ministry of Finance. In Vietnam, IPOs
and stock market listings are distinct processes for most state-owned
enterprises.</p>
<p>EVN Finance's dud of a listing is unlikely to help matters.</p>
<p>The financial services arm of state monopoly Electricity of Vietnam made its
belated debut on the Hanoi Stock Exchange's unlisted public company market on
Tuesday, 10 years after being approved as a public company. EVN Finance shares
dropped 29% on the first trading day.</p>
<p>The sharp decline will discourage other state-owned companies from listing
their shares, at least in the next few months, said Ha Thi, an individual
investor in Ho Chi Minh City. UPCoM, as the market is known, is a steppingstone
to listing on one of the country's main exchanges.</p>
<p>Under the Vietnamese system, IPOs typically sell minority stakes to public
and strategic investors. Privatized state enterprises are then supposed to list
on either of the country's main stock exchanges, in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City,
or on UPCoM, within a year from the date of their IPO.</p>
<p>Analysts say that new regulations in effect since January pose an obstacle
to listings, particularly when it comes to valuations. All state-owned
enterprises that completed valuation assessments before the new rules have to
redo them in light of the stricter regulations on land-use rights and other
changes.</p>
<p>A recent report by Saigon Securities Research notes that land-use rights
have become a prominent issue in state-sector IPOs, with greater scrutiny of
state-owned land transferred to private companies. This explains delays in a
number of listings, especially for companies based in Ho Chi Minh City,
according to the report.</p>
<p>Vietnam's government in 2016 ordered state-owned enterprises to speed up
their listings. But market observers say the lack of serious penalties for
delays <del>the maximum fine for missing the deadline is only $7,000</del> is
part of the problem.</p>
<p>Investors are more attracted to shares listed on the main bourses,
especially the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange, which applies stricter rules on
information disclosure, governance and capital transparency, among other
requirements. State-owned enterprises which had missed deadlines to move from
UPCoM to the main board include Vietnam Airlines, Airport Corp. of Vietnam, and
Vietnam National Textile and Garment Group.</p>
<p>The past three months saw a lull in state-sector privatization. The majority
of listings between April and June came from the private sector, namely FPT
Retail, Vinhomes, and Techcombank. IPOs and listings by state-owned
enterprises, meanwhile, have been quiet, despite a successful wave lasting from
the fourth quarter of 2017 to the first quarter of 2018.</p>
<p>Official statistics showed a total of 16 state enterprises held IPOs and
sold stakes to strategic investors, collecting $968.9 million in total during
the six months ended in June. The biggest deals occurred in the first quarter,
led by PetroVietnam Power raising $301.9 million.</p>
<p>The ongoing anti-corruption campaign in the country, which has sent several
heads of state-owned companies to prison, notably PetroVietnam ex-Chairman Dinh
La Thang, also makes executives reluctant to deal with state assets as part of
the reforms.</p>
<p>IPO and divestment activity could remain quiet for the near term, with only
strong political will able to put the process back on track, said Hung Pham, an
analyst at Saigon Securities.</p>
<p>Experts said that the Vietnamese government and state enterprises could face
difficulties in pricing themselves under very high expectations. Potential
strategic investors preferred to hold a controlling stake of more than 51%.</p>
<p>Vietnam National Shipping Lines, or Vinalines, on Monday presented a new IPO
plan after no strategic investor met the requirements to acquire a more than
14% stake offered by the company. State ownership will remain at 65% after the
IPO.</p>
<p>In September, Dongthap Petroleum Trading Import Export, a state enterprise
operating in the Mekong Delta, seeks to raise $2 million by selling a 35.4%
stake in an initial offering here. The state plans to keep a majority stake of
64% in the company.</p>
<p>Nikkei Asian Review - August 8 ,2018</p>Taiwan to Vietnam: ‘We’re not Chinese’urn:md5:fa7ed86115deb378d9125e4df965c3052018-08-08T09:10:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishdemonstrationsdiplomacyTaiwan<p>Taiwanese firms are literally flying the national flag in Vietnam to protect
their interests against a rising wave of anti-China sentiment</p> <p>Taiwanese companies in Vietnam are increasingly being squeezed between a
rock and a hard place as China ramps up diplomatic pressure on their displays
of national identity.</p>
<p>If they hang Taiwan’s national flag outside their offices and factories,
then China kicks up a threatening fuss with Hanoi about its professed
sovereignty over the island state Beijing views as a renegade province.</p>
<p>If they keep their flags furled, then their factories may be perceived to be
China-owned and potentially targeted by nationalistic protesters who see
China’s growing commercial and economic interests in Vietnam as a threat to
sovereignty.</p>
<p>The lose-lose situation came to a head in July, when Beijing lodged an
official diplomatic complaint with Hanoi for allowing Taiwanese businesses to
fly the red-and-blue-flag above their local buildings.</p>
<p>“There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China,” Chinese
foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang was quoted saying in reports. “We have
taken up the matter with the Vietnamese side, and they have already instructed
the relevant companies to correct their wrong practices.”</p>
<p>That’s not immediately clear on the ground as the flag can still be seen at
some Taiwanese businesses nearly a month later. Taiwan was Vietnam’s fourth
largest foreign investor, with total invested capital of around US$8 billion,
as of 2017, according to official statistics.</p>
<p>Vietnam is a key target of Taiwan’s so-called “Southbound” foreign policy to
strengthen ties to Southeast Asia.</p>
<p>But the dust-up over Taiwanese flag-flying is part and parcel of an
intensifying diplomatic drama between China and Vietnam, one that is raising
new downstream risks to those who rely on Vietnamese production for their
global supply chains.</p>
<p>Taiwan is unwillingly faced with rising anti-China sentiment in Vietnam,
which over the last two months has seen some of the most intense and widespread
anti-China protests in years. Hundreds of thousands protested across the
country, sparking a harsh crackdown that has resulted in hundreds of
arrests.</p>
<p>The spark: a draft special economic zone (SEZ) law that many Vietnamese
believe will allow China to dominate major industrial areas through a new
99-year lease provision. Taiwanese businesses are now reportedly concerned that
popular anger will mistakenly hit their factories and businesses during a new
wave of protests.</p>
<p>“The protesters pointed to the risks of losing national sovereignty to
China, alleged to be the key beneficiary of the Special Administrative and
Economic zones scheme,” California State University professor Angie Ngoc Tran
wrote in New Mandala, an academic blog.</p>
<p>Tran noted that while the draft law does not overtly mention China, it does
grant special privileges to three of Vietnam’s special economic zones in
particular: one on the Chinese border, another situated on the shores of the
South China Sea, and a third bordering on an area of Cambodia dominated by
Chinese investment.</p>
<p>“Who else would stand to benefit the most from both economic and
administrative control over land, air, and sea lanes from these three zones?”
she asked.</p>
<p>As Vietnamese ire rises against a law they see as ceding sovereignty to
China, so too have Taiwanese flags outside of their local businesses.</p>
<p>Observers say the Taiwanese companies are not so much taking a patriotic
stand vis-à-vis China than taking pragmatic corporate decisions. Taiwanese
firms here know acutely how politics and business often mix volatilely in
Vietnam.</p>
<p>In May 2014, Beijing’s decision to position an oil rig in a part of the
South China Sea claimed by Hanoi led to days of fiery anti-China demonstrations
across Vietnam. Local protests took out their fury on perceived Chinese
interests by damaging, looting and destroying over 350 factories in Binh Duong
province alone.</p>
<p>The protestors, however, often missed their nationalistic mark by apparently
targeting plants with foreign Asian lettering on their signs that resulted in
not only Chinese but also Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese factories coming under
assault.</p>
<p>While Vietnam confirmed three Chinese deaths in the 2014 melee, foreign
reports quoting doctors put the figure as high as 21. Hundreds of Chinese fled
the violence, with many taking flight across the border into neighboring
Cambodia.</p>
<p>Flag-flying Taiwanese businesses clearly fear a possible repeat of the
overly anti-China violence that also indiscriminately targeted foreigners.</p>
<p>One Taiwanese businessman told a local newspaper his furniture company
suffered US$1 million in losses in the 2014 violence and that he recently
erected Taiwan’s flag outside of his firm when anti-China protests kicked up
again in June.</p>
<p>The draft SEZ law that sparked the protests is now on hold in the Communist
Party-dominated National Assembly, but some believe a new wave of anti-China
demonstrations could erupt if and when the law is finally passed.</p>
<p>Taiwan’s recent experience adds to its political risk. In 2016, Taiwanese
steel maker Formosa caused one of Vietnam’s worst ever environmental disasters
when it was found to have dumped tons of toxic waste in the central region’s
sea, a spill that killed a massive number of fish and devastated
coastlines.</p>
<p>The disaster sparked nationwide protests that were fueled in part by
perceived as insensitive remarks by a Formosa executive who said at the height
of the disaster that Vietnam needed to choose between having a modern steel or
traditional fishing industry.</p>
<p>The company paid a US$500 million fine but is now expanding the same
contentious facility that was also hit in the 2014 violence. But if new
anti-China protests erupt in the weeks ahead, it’s not entirely clear that
flying the flag will protect Taiwanese businesses from xenophobic
sentiment.</p>
<p>By Ma Nguyen - Asia Times - August 7, 2018</p>Biggest Vietnam oil refinery boosts output as defects fixedurn:md5:64ae0048f45cb7a5d4cfc95da1b244a62018-08-08T08:52:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishoil and gas companyoil refinery<p>The biggest oil refinery in one of Asia’s fastest-growing economies is
ramping up production and expects to run at full capacity in September after a
16-month delay due to faulty construction, its general director said.</p> <p>Vietnam’s Nghi Son refinery, in which state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp. and
Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan Co. each own 35.1 percent, plans to begin commercial
operations by Nov. 15, Shintaro Ishida said in an interview at the plant in
Thanh Hoa province. The facility is on track to reach its processing limit of
200,000 barrels a day of crude in September, after which it will complete the
performance tests and documentation needed to operate commercially, he
said.</p>
<p>The joint venture, known officially as Nghi Son Refinery and Petrochemical
Co., had to delay the start of full operations mostly as a result of “welding
defects” and other construction faults, Ishida said. It expects to export fuel
products in September and October, probably in Asia, and then shift to selling
entirely within Vietnam, he said.</p>
<p>Nghi Son will shut down in April and May for regular maintenance, he said,
without specifying dates for the work.</p>
<p><strong>Defending Markets</strong></p>
<p>The $9 billion refinery will enable Vietnam to cut diesel and gasoline
imports from neighboring countries, including South Korea, Singapore and
Malaysia. Because it will process Kuwaiti crude, Nghi Son is also part of a
trend in which Middle Eastern crude producers are seeking to invest in Asian
refineries to secure sales in the biggest oil-consuming region. Vietnam’s
economic growth rate accelerated in the second quarter to 6.8 percent and is
poised to remain one of the world’s fastest.</p>
<p>Nghi Son is targeting domestic sales with an output of diesel, gasoline and
jet fuel. At the same time, if overseas demand is strong, “we can consider to
export” even after October, Ishida said. The refinery has government approval
in principle to export fuel, though it will still need permission for each
shipment, he said.</p>
<p>The plant will start producing polypropylene and other petrochemicals in
2019, selling them to its Japanese and Kuwait partners, Ishida said.</p>
<p>Vietnam Oil &amp; Gas, known as PetroVietnam, owns 25.1 percent of the
venture, while Mitsui Chemicals Inc. holds the remaining 4.7 percent. Nghi Son
is Vietnam’s second oil refinery after Dung Quat, which started operations in
2009.</p>
<p>By Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen &amp; John Boudreau - Bloomberg - 7 août 2018</p>Vietnam’s cinema industry gets a $50mln boosturn:md5:63dee27aa35c3b28755bdd50e6a5475d2018-08-07T08:56:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishartscinemaculture<p>Five firms have launched the Vietnam Entertainment Fund, which will operate
like a holding firm, focusing on cinemas.</p> <p>The fund has a market capitalization of $50 million with each founding
members having a 20 percent stake.</p>
<p>The five founding member are: Vietnam's Yeah1 CMG, the country's leading
movie production platform; Surfing Holdings; Green International, U.S.-based
R&amp;B Capital Group; and MBC Studio, a joint venture between Vietnam's MCV
Corp and Japan's Asahi Broadcasting Group Holdings.</p>
<p>The fund will focus on cinema advertising and screen complexes, with a
target on medium and long-term investments in the entertainment sector.</p>
<p>Nguyen Cao Tung, chief executive of Vietnam Entertainment Fund (VEF), said
the fund will provide extensive financial support and standardize movie studios
in Vietnam.</p>
<p>It will maximize profits for investors by increasing the capital value and
dividend yield from initial investments, including the intellectual property of
movies, and advertisements at theaters, Tung said.</p>
<p>He said that if the founding members work together, they can make 10 to 15
movies a year, without worrying too much about investment. Funds for each movie
will range from 5 percent to as high as 45 percent, depending on producers'
demands.</p>
<p>Tung also said that initially, the fund will offer a minimum dividend of 8
percent a year and a maximum of 10.5 percent. This dividend level could be
maintained until 2022, he added.</p>
<p>Investors will be able to take part in movie projects, own movie theaters
and run advertisements in these venues.</p>
<p>VEF expects to launch an IPO after five years, Tung said.</p>
<p>The fund will invest in an average of 20 film projects each year, providing
support in capital, media and marketing consulting for producers, Nikkei said
in a report last week.</p>
<p>It also plans advertising projects in 40 cinema complexes by 2020, and aims
to acquire 10-40 percent stake in 40 cinema complexes this year and next, and
own some complexes by 2020.</p>
<p>VEF, which was established in consultation with VinaCapital, the biggest
investment fund in Vietnam, follows the model of entertainment funds in other
countries, such as CA-Cygames Anime in Japan and Marvel Studios in the U.S.,
said the report.</p>
<p>According to VEF, the local movie industry’s estimated annual revenue is
VND2.3 trillion ($98 million), but it is projected to grow 25 percent each
year.</p>
<p>Imported movies, mainly from Hollywood, dominate the box office now.
Vietnamese films account for about 20 percent of revenues.</p>
<p>At a meeting in October last year, Do Duy Anh, deputy head of the Vietnam
Cinema Department said that a fund for the cinema business is necessary for the
long-term development of the country's movie industry.</p>
<p>Nguyen Thi Hong Ngat, deputy head of the Vietnam Cinema Association, told
the meeting that movie makers and artists had been longing for such a fund
because funding from the state was too modest to make decent movies.
Furthermore, most state investment was focused on movies with wartime and
propadanda themes, she said.</p>
<p>The October meeting was held following disagreements between artists and the
new investor in the national film studio.</p>
<p>The Vietnam Feature Film Studio, which was established by the government in
1953, put a 65 percent stake up for sale last year which was snapped up by the
Hanoi-based Waterway Transportation Corporation in June 2017 for more than
VND32 billion ($1.4 million).</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the sale, senior members of the studio said the company
had no experience in the film industry and had failed to make good on promises
to buy new equipment and start promotional campaigns.</p>
<p>The firm set a goal of producing one movie and one television series a year,
which, according to artists, was far below the studio’s potential.</p>
<p>The company has also fallen short on payment promises.</p>
<p>The escalating dispute got the government involved, saying it will look
again into the acquisition.</p>
<p>By Minh Nga - VnExpress.net - August 7, 2018</p>Reactionary ‘red flags’ tilt Vietnam to the Alt-righturn:md5:09bbb68b6930df3fb56af0f3d99b5eeb2018-08-07T08:52:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishCommunist Partypolicy<p>Ultra-nationalist movement rails against liberals, Catholics and the United
States in a rally cry for more, not less, Communist Party repression</p> <p>The Facebook page of Nguyen Thanh Tuan, a retired lieutenant general in the
Vietnamese military, seethes with his critical commentary of the newly released
book Gạc Ma: Vòng Tròn Bất Tử, a historical account of China’s annexation from
Vietnam of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.</p>
<p>Tuan, along with a growing number of online voices who refer to themselves
as “red flag nationalists”, felt the volume was textbook “historical
revisionism” that was both unpatriotic and disrespectful to national heroes,
and agitated for the ruling Communist Party to censor the work.</p>
<p>ance with large national flags marking an anniversary of Vietnam's communist
regime in Hanoi, February 3, 2017. Photo: AFP/Hoang Dinh Nam</p>
<p>The Facebook page of Nguyen Thanh Tuan, a retired lieutenant general in the
Vietnamese military, seethes with his critical commentary of the newly released
book Gạc Ma: Vòng Tròn Bất Tử, a historical account of China’s annexation from
Vietnam of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.</p>
<p>Tuan, along with a growing number of online voices who refer to themselves
as “red flag nationalists”, felt the volume was textbook “historical
revisionism” that was both unpatriotic and disrespectful to national heroes,
and agitated for the ruling Communist Party to censor the work. The dailyReport
Must-reads from across Asia - directly to your inbox</p>
<p>In recent days, Vietnamese authorities have appeared to acquiesce by
ordering a temporary halt to the book’s distribution, reportedly to make
corrections to contentious passages.</p>
<p>It was yet another victory for Vietnam’s rising online “red flag” movement,
named after the country’s starred scarlet banner. Some analysts who monitor its
online posts have likened it to the xenophobic and illiberal Alt-Right movement
in the United States.</p>
<p>Active mainly on Facebook and Youtube, the “red flag” groups message is
clarion: They want more, not less, Communist Party repression against liberal
voices and for it to restore the nation’s founding socialist credentials.</p>
<p>It is at times nationalistic and militaristic, but more than anything it is
overtly anti-Western. As well as grassroots agitators, many prominent voices
within these groups are current or retired members of the security apparatus,
from both the police and military. And while most are ardent supports of the
Communist Party, many complain that it has lost its way.</p>
<p>In particular, they argue that the Party has been too lenient on liberals,
mistaken in its nominal advocacy for “democratization” of society and often
dishonors the Party’s heroes like Ho Chi Minh by forging closer relations with
America, the group’s bete noire.</p>
<p>For some, they are part of the polarization of Vietnamese society, seen most
clearly online by antagonistic ideological groups. First and foremost is the
sizable pro-human rights and democratic movement, which openly campaigns for a
transition to a multi-party system in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Many of this movement’s activists have banded online around groups like the
Brotherhood for Democracy, a network established in 2013 which has been
severely hit by government repression in recent months, with six of its
prominent members imprisoned in April.</p>
<p>Another component group are the so-called “yellow flags,” a reference to the
flag of the Republic of Vietnam, the anti-communist South that fell to the
North in 1975. Many of its proponents are from diaspora communities, especially
in America where many supporters of the Saigon regime fled after the
communist’s victory in 1975.</p>
<p>In seeming response, the regressive “red flag” groups have emerged with a
vengeance in recent months. A popular YouTube channel known as Viet Vision,
which at its height had 97,000 subscribers before reportedly ceasing operations
in March, was thought to be a major voice for the movement.</p>
<p>Before shuttering, it published lengthy videos attacking liberal activists
like prominent human rights lawyer Nguyen Van Dai and Pham Doan Trang, a
well-known blogger and journalist who was recently placed under house
arrest.</p>
<p>One of Viet Vision’s most well-known commentators was Tran Nhat Quang, a
prominent “red flag nationalist” who gained notoriety in 2015 when he tried to
resurrect vigilante “people’s courts” to punish, or at least to report, people
who disrespected the country’s flag, defamed national heroes or showed support
for the old South Vietnam.</p>
<p>This centered on the case of Nguyen Lan Thang, a human rights activist who
Quang claimed had defamed the honor of revolutionary hero Ho Chi Minh. Thang
said that he was constantly followed and attacked by unknown vigilantes,
supposedly from “red flag” groups, who painted red insignia on the front door
of his home.</p>
<p>Although it is primarily an online movement, its members often physically
act on their threats. In September 2017, for example, group associates based in
the nation’s southern provinces entered a church in Dong Nai province
brandishing pistols and batons.</p>
<p>They came to threaten a Catholic priest, Nguyen Duy Tan, who had called for
a referendum on certain social issues on his Facebook page. Eleven individuals
were later fined over the incident. In another incident in 2017, Quang and
associates reportedly attacked two priests in Nghe An province.</p>
<p>The “red flag” movement is known to be vehemently anti-Catholic, most likely
because of its members’ articulated hatred of French colonialism and the old
Republic of Vietnam regime, whose leaders and state apparatus privileged
Catholics.</p>
<p>There are various opinions on the importance of the emerging hardline
movement. Some commentators reckon they are paid by the state and only act and
comment when the Party wants them to, particularly when the regime wants to
silence liberal critics.</p>
<p>Another interpretation is they are just a consortium of a few voices, mainly
retired military officials, who are glorified online “trolls.” Some spectators
call them the new “Red Guards” of the Party, reference to the paramilitaries
who previously ferreted out anti-regime elements.</p>
<p>ut relationships with the Party differs from “red flag” individual to
individual, and at least in the early days authorities were certainly not
entirely supportive of the groups.</p>
<p>For example, when some “red flag” members counter-protested a memorial
demonstration led by liberal activists in Hanoi in March 2015, the capital’s
police chief Nguyen Duc Chung, who is now chairman of Hanoi’s People’s
Committee, considered their actions inappropriate.</p>
<p>Some high profile members lost their government jobs as a result while
others quit their nationalistic activism</p>
<p>Nowadays, however, there is very little push back from the government.
Indeed, last year the propaganda branch of Ho Chi Minh City’s party apparatus
started a Facebook page called “Cờ Đỏ TPHCM”, or “Ho Chi Minh City Red Flags,”
reportedly under pressure from proponents living in the southern economic hub
where most “red flag” members are based.</p>
<p>The “red flag” groups relations with Force 47, a 10,000-strong cyber-warfare
unit controlled by the military tasked with spreading pro-Party propaganda and
flagging up content for authorities to investigate. Analysts say that “red
flag” groups actually grew because of what they considered an inadequate
response by authorities towards “anti-state” content published online.</p>
<p>“From a psychological point of view, their members regard participating in a
so-called cyber-warfare against liberal activists and commentators as a
‘people’s war’… paradoxically as a human right to have a greater say in the
nation’s politics,” contends a political risk analyst who requested
anonymity.</p>
<p>In many ways, the “red flag” are comparable in outlook to the so-called “New
Left” which formed in China during the 1990s reform era. Taisu Zhang, of Yale
Law School, has described the “New Left” as combining nationalist sentiments,
particularly anti-Western ones, with demands for a “reconstruction of
socialism.”</p>
<p>But unlike China’s “New Left,” which chiefly emerged from intellectual
circles, Vietnam’s “red flag” movement often lacks a coherent ideological
standpoint on big questions and issues.</p>
<p>For example, some partisans oppose globalist and pro-capitalist economic
reforms, “but fervently support any economic policy… as long as they are
government-initiated – regardless of being ostensibly progressive or outright
anti-socialist economic measures,” says one analyst who monitors the movement
online.</p>
<p>Their foreign policy outlook is also often confused. Many present themselves
as patriotic by being critical of China, Vietnam’s historic enemy and source of
much nationalistic fervor in the country. Yet they often express envy at
Beijing’s model of governance and tend to drop anti-China sentiment when it
comes to Vietnam’s improved relations with America.</p>
<p>At the basest level, “red flag” nationalists consider America to be a much
greater threat than China. They broadly oppose what they see as a worrying
trend in Vietnamese society, which some of them term “bài Trung, phò Mỹ,” or
“shunning China and being a prostitute to the US.”</p>
<p>China’s “New Left” and Vietnam’s “red flag” groups share concerns about
their respective nations’ “post-ideological” eras, the 1990s in China and more
recently in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Small wonder, then, that former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who was
instrumental in forming closer relations with America during the 2000s and
veered away from ideology in favor of more individualistic rule, is widely
panned in “red flag” circles.</p>
<p>During Dung’s decade-long tenure, communist ideologues were replaced by both
technocrats, in line with the nation’s transition to more market-oriented
economics, as well as capitalistic rent-seekers whose only interest in politics
was for financial gain.</p>
<p>Vietnam’s “red flag” groups are now openly calling for the reconstruction of
socialism in its most illiberal form. They have found a natural champion in
current Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. For some, Trong has
“re-ideologicalized” Vietnamese politics.</p>
<p>Unlike his predecessors, Trong has reemphasized the country’s – and Party’s
– moral and ideological cravings. He often speaks about socialism and the
dangers of “peaceful evolution,” Party lexicon for democratic reforms.</p>
<p>Improving the morality of Party members will decide “whether the revolution
will succeed or fail,” Trong said in May, around the same time that he
introduced new performance assessments for Party members.</p>
<p>Trong’s asserted his dominance over the Party at the 2016 Party Congress,
when his conservative allies forced the less-ideological and Dung, out of
office.</p>
<p>“The campaigns against ordinary and ideological corruption are for Nguyen
Phu Trong the fruit of a lifetime of effort,” wrote David Brown, a former US
diplomat and Vietnamese linguist, in April.</p>
<p>“At 73, the General Secretary is already well past retirement age and
impatient to fulfill his mission of cleansing the Party and restoring its
authority,” he added.</p>
<p>Since the 2016 Party Congress, Trong has unleashed a monumental
anti-corruption drive to restore the Party’s morality as well as purge Dung
loyalists. He has also led a crackdown against Party critics and liberal
activists, of which more than 100 are now thought to be imprisoned.</p>
<p>“I would say the crackdown on liberals these days is part of a trend where
the conservatives at the top are gaining more influence, including the ‘red
flags’. They have for a long time complained that the government has been too
lenient on liberal forces,” says an analyst.</p>
<p>It’s a repressive trend that is likely to intensify as Trong and the “red
flag” groups essentially sing from the same hymn book. Yet it would be
wrongheaded to think of the nationalist groups as unswerving Party loyalists
and hence represent a double-edged sword for the communists, say analysts.</p>
<p>Whether the groups morph into the sort of movement that challenges the
Party’s current configuration and outlook, like the Tea Party did to the
Republican Party in the US, is yet to be seen. But the “red flag” groups are
clearly driving greater polarization in Vietnamese society between liberal and
illiberal groups and through violent acts and rhetoric threaten to tip the
stability the regime has long given primacy.</p>
<p>By David Hutt - Asia Times - August 5, 2018</p>Vietnam court jails 46 bankers over loan scam led by construction bank chairmanurn:md5:708f41c9b5c9f23071e708fe22c2a4962018-08-07T08:44:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishbankcorruptionjustice<p>It is the latest in a series of major banking trials aimed at cleaning up a
sector plagued by bad debts, corruption and nepotism</p> <p>A court in Vietnam convicted 46 former bankers and businessmen of corruption
on Monday over a multimillion-dollar lending scam spearheaded by the
once-powerful chairman of Vietnam’s Construction Bank.</p>
<p>It is the latest in a series of major banking trials aimed at cleaning up
the opaque sector long plagued by bad debts, corruption and nepotism.</p>
<p>Vietnam’s communist leaders have vowed to target the banking business as
they wage a sweeping anti-corruption campaign yjsy observers said was
unprecedented in its scope and scale.</p>
<p>The government said it was weeding out bad actors, while critics said it was
also eliminating political foes in the process.</p>
<p>The latest bankers and executives jailed are accused of causing losses of
more than US$257 million in an elaborate lending scheme involving Vietnam’s
Construction Bank, according to the official newspaper of the justice
department of Ho Chi Minh City.</p>
<p>The construction bank’s former head, Pham Cong Danh, was found guilty of
overseeing an illegal lending scheme between the bank, other allied banks and
29 private companies to which he had ties.</p>
<p>The companies were unable to repay the money and Vietnam’s Construction Bank
was eventually sold to the central bank for $0 in 2015.</p>
<p>Danh was sentenced to serve 20 years in jail for “deliberate wrongdoings …
causing serious consequences”, the newspaper said, while his accomplices were
given terms ranging from 10 years in jail to a two-year suspended sentence.</p>
<p>It was the second guilty verdict for Danh, who was convicted in a connected
banking corruption trial in 2016. He will now serve a total of 30 years in
jail.</p>
<pre>
Jail for man who helped Vietnam kidnap oil executive from Berlin park
</pre>
<p>The notorious banker spent several years in prison in the 1990s for
embezzlement and gained a reputation as a shrewd – and wealthy – businessman
during his career in the construction industry before he moved into
banking.</p>
<p>He joins scores of bankers, executives and former politicians behind bars in
the one-party state that has long had the reputation of being one of Asia’s
most corrupt countries.</p>
<p>Despite strong economic growth in recent years it remains corruption-prone,
ranking 107 out of 180 on Transparency International’s corruption Index –
behind Thailand, Indonesia and China.</p>
<p>Agence France Presse - August 7, 2018</p>Việt Nam to launch quick job search applicationurn:md5:a13a46f44a9dc73d829593db481013df2018-08-06T08:54:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishjob<p>Job seekers can turn to a new smartphone app iWORK in a bid to find
work.</p> <p>The app is also available to help those looking for staff find the right
employee. The app is for smartphones running iOS or Android.</p>
<p>Founder John Nguyễn said that unemployment was increasing when many
graduates and other job seekers are unable to find employment suitable to their
needs.</p>
<p>The most common cause was lack of information of employers, lack of
candidate information, and costly travel for interviews, he said.</p>
<p>This app helps people find work quickly in the area they want.</p>
<p>It also allows for live chat between the recruiter and candidate to find
information quickly, effectively, and save time and ensure safe confidential
information, he said.</p>
<p>In future, the iWORK Việt Nam will organise a conference to introduce the
app to Vietnamese consumers.</p>
<p>Vietnam News - August 6, 2018</p>Vietnam's HCM City to host international marathon to promote tourism in Januaryurn:md5:e337bbb4f74948c8929dbcafef18860a2018-08-06T08:52:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishSaigonsporttourism<p>An international marathon will be held here on January 13, 2019 with runners
from nearly 50 countries and regions participating, the city's municipal
Department of Culture and Sports said on Sunday.</p> <p>Thousands of runners will compete in four categories of 42km, 21km, 10km and
5km. Children are invited to run for a distance of 1km.</p>
<p>The marathon is expected to help promote tourism in Ho Chi Minh City as well
as in Vietnam, the department said.</p>
<p>Xinhua Agency - August 5, 2018</p>Vietnam sentences 5 to death, 4 get life for drug traffickingurn:md5:288471e71173f3781fa68acb041fce752018-08-05T17:09:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishdeath penaltydrugjustice<p>A HCMC court sentenced five members of a drug gang to death and gave life
sentences to four others on Thursday.</p> <p>The leader of the gang, Nguyen Van Phu, 54, and four of his henchmen aged
27-58 got death for &quot;illegally trading and trafficking narcotics.&quot;</p>
<p>The four to get life for the same charges are aged 26-45.</p>
<p>Three others received jail sentences of five to 20 years.</p>
<p>According to the indictment, Phu frequently traveled to Cambodia as part of
his job, and became acquainted with drug suppliers in the neighboring
country.</p>
<p>He and his former jail associates, Nguyen Thi Be and Nguyen Hung Loc, then
set up a gang to traffic drugs from Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City.</p>
<p>The gang first appeared on the authorities’ radar when customs officers at
Moc Bai Border Gate in the southern province of Tay Ninh caught Be and Loc
trying to enter Vietnam with 2.1 kilograms (4.6 pounds) of heroin in 2015.</p>
<p>Be was later sentenced to death for drug trafficking, but Loc managed to
escape and warn Phu, enabling him to evade arrest.</p>
<p>Phu was eventually tracked down in November 2015 after police arrested one
of his buyers in Ho Chi Minh City's District 8 with 5.2 kg of heroin.</p>
<p>The buyer fingered Phu, and the police quickly arrested him and his
gang.</p>
<p>Its associates in the north were arrested a few months later after police
caught a gang member trafficking 17 kilograms of synthetic drugs from the
northern port city of Hai Phong to a hotel in HCMC to meet Phu's men.</p>
<p>The gang had traded over 20 kg of heroin and 17 kg of synthetic drugs
between March 2014 and January 2016, according to prosecutors.</p>
<p>Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest drug laws. Those convicted of
possessing or smuggling more than 600 grams of heroin or cocaine or more than
2.5 kg of methamphetamine could face the death penalty.</p>
<p>The production or sale of 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal
narcotics is also punishable by death.</p>
<p>By Lan Ngoc - VnExpress.net - August 3, 2018 |</p>US citizen detained in Vietnam may be there several months pending investigation, family saysurn:md5:f25a07e9e07b52112fc65c0a84e404762018-08-05T17:03:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishhuman rightspoliceprisonUnited States of America<p>A 54-year old American missing in Vietnam for nearly a month is being held
by Vietnamese authorities, his family and a congresswoman announced
Thursday.</p> <p>Detained without charges, he is the second U.S. citizen recently arrested by
the government amid a widening crackdown on human rights and protests in the
communist country.</p>
<p>Michael Nguyen, a father of four from Los Angeles, was visiting family and
friends when he was last heard from July 6, according to his family. After a
frantic search, during which they were stonewalled by the U.S. embassy and the
State Department, they learned this week he had been arrested July 7 and is
under investigation for &quot;activity against the peoples' government.&quot;</p>
<p>The State Department declined to confirm his arrest Thursday, but the family
and their congresswoman, Rep. Mimi Walters, D-California, said that the U.S.
Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City informed the family of his detention on
Tuesday.</p>
<p>Nguyen left for Vietnam on June 27, keeping in sporadic touch with family
through text messages and emails. But when traveling back to Ho Chi Minh City
from Da Nang on July 7, he was arrested under circumstances still unknown. His
family thought the lack of communication was possibly because of the poor
reception in a developing country or even the Vietnamese government shutting
down communications.</p>
<p>Although Vietnam has modernized and reformed over the past couple decades to
allow for some more economic freedom and human rights, it's still a communist
country with one-party rule. It now has strong economic and diplomatic ties to
the U.S., which has at times shied away from criticizing the government, to
steer it away from Chinese influence.</p>
<pre>
After the silence, a family friend went to pick up Nguyen at the airport on July 16 -- but he wasn't on the flight. That set off a two-week scramble as his family filed a missing-persons report and contacted the U.S. embassy, the State Department and the offices of Rep. Walters and other members of Congress.
</pre>
<p>But no one had any information. The Vietnamese government had not informed
the U.S. mission that it had detained an American citizen, even though they are
required to do so within four days. Ten days later, Vietnamese authorities
contacted the U.S. to say he was in custody.</p>
<p>Still, Nguyen's wife, Helen, and their family and friends largely were left
in the dark. Because of a 1994 law called the Privacy Act, U.S. officials
cannot give out any information about an American imprisoned without that
citizen's written consent, even to family.</p>
<p>&quot;We're really completely in the dark, with no information,&quot; Christine
Nguyen, Michael's sister-in-law, told ABC News last Friday before the family
was informed. While they believed Michael had been arrested, they weren't sure
if he'd been killed.</p>
<p>Nearly daily calls to the U.S. consulate provided no information, even after
officials knew he was alive and detained. But until a consular officer could
visit Nguyen and have him sign a waiver, they were unable to provide details --
instead even suggesting the family call Vietnamese detention centers in the
area, providing them with phone numbers to do so.</p>
<p>Christine said those calls were like pounding sand, with Vietnamese
officials denying his detention and giving the family other numbers to call, to
no avail.</p>
<p>Some relatives was able to meet with Rep. Walters's staff on July 27, which
&quot;gave the family confidence that locating Michael would soon be possible,&quot;
according to brother-in-law Mark Roberts.</p>
<p>But it wasn't until a consular officer was finally able to visit Nguyen at a
detention facility in Ho Chi Minh City on July 31 that they learned he was
alive and well. The officer reported back that he appeared to be in good
health, although he did request a medical evaluation, the family said.</p>
<p>Now begins the trying journey through the Vietnamese legal system. Nguyen
has not been charged with any crime because authorities are still investigating
-- a process that seems backwards to Americans, but that his family now will
have to wait through. That investigation could take three to five months,
possibly longer, the family said Thursday.</p>
<p>&quot;We ask the Vietnamese authorities to release Michael Nguyen immediately,&quot;
the family said in a statement. &quot;Detaining anyone without any crime being
committed, without any probable cause, is a violation of human rights and
international law.&quot;</p>
<pre>
If the recent past is any example, however, it should not take that long. Nguyen's arrest comes just weeks after another American was detained by the Vietnamese government, beaten and bloodied by police while he was protesting in Ho Chi Minh City on June 10.
</pre>
<p>A 32-year old graduate student originally from Houston, Texas, Will Nguyen
<del>no relation</del> was charged with &quot;disrupting the peace&quot; for
participating in a peaceful protest -- one of many in major cities across the
country against a newly proposed economic policy that would grant special land
leases or economic zones to foreign companies and, in particular, the
Chinese.</p>
<p>After 40 days in custody, Will Nguyen was convicted and deported for
disturbing the peace on July 20.</p>
<p>It's unclear if Michael and Will were accidentally swept up in the
Vietnamese government's push against dissent, or if that sweep is meant to
include some Americans to make an example out of them.</p>
<p>Either way, it's not likely that Vietnam will detain Michael Nguyen long
term, if only to save itself a headache from American officials. Unfortunately,
the same cannot be said for Vietnamese citizens.</p>
<p>By Conor Finnegan - ABC News - August 3, 2018</p>China-constructed urban railway in Vietnam starts final test runsurn:md5:7dc6ee4e7436e566fb6b017076de841f2018-08-02T09:48:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishHanoirailwaytransportation<p>Vietnam's first urban railway, constructed by China Railway Sixth Group Co.
Ltd, started final test runs on Wednesday.</p> <p>The Cat Linh-Ha Dong urban rail line in Vietnam's Hanoi capital started test
runs with full electricity system on Wednesday. Over 100 representatives from
Vietnamese and foreign news agencies in Vietnam and from the Chinese contractor
boarded a four-carriage train to experience and evaluate its operation.</p>
<p>As the air-conditioned green train smoothly moved on track, passengers
turned more and more excited.</p>
<p>&quot;It is very cool, clean and well-organized. I am so happy that I was one of
its first informal passengers,&quot; Tran Tuan Hiep, a 37-year-old staff of a news
agency in Hanoi told Xinhua about his first impression.</p>
<p>Inside the China-made train, there are designated areas for people with
mobility disabilities. Seats for the elderly, pregnant women and children are
highlighted in yellow color, while steel holders are there to make sure safe
positions for standing passengers.</p>
<p>&quot;It runs quite smoothly. I feel secure and relaxed,&quot; Hiep said with a bright
smile, adding that he would travel to work by urban train if its fare was
reasonable.</p>
<p>The project has undergone a number of separated test runs on different
categories since July. It will start running on trial basis, which welcomes
local residents, in October.</p>
<p>With a total length of around 13 km running through 12 stations, Cat Linh-Ha
Dong Line connects the three districts of Ha Dong, Thanh Xuan and Dong Da. Its
construction started in 2011.</p>
<p>The railway will operate 13 four-carriage trains that will run every two
minutes at speeds of between 35 and 80 km per hour.</p>
<p>Xinhua Agency - August 1st, 2018</p>Vietnam coffee growers expecting record crop in coming seasonurn:md5:fa7d55b18edbe9790eae6b75927f485e2018-08-02T09:45:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishagriculturecoffee<p>Coffee farmers in Vietnam, the largest producer of robusta beans, are tipped
to have a record crop next season after good weather favored plant development
and replanting boosted yields. Local prices remain low.</p> <p>Production will climb to 1.8 million metric tons in the year beginning
October assuming normal weather, according to the median estimate of 15 traders
and analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That compares with 1.79 million in a survey
last month and a forecast Tuesday from the nation's agriculture ministry that
output will exceed 1.8 million tons.</p>
<p>&quot;I would say 1.8 million tons is a record high ever for a Vietnamese coffee
crop,&quot; said Le Tien Hung, general director of Simexco Dak Lak, the nation's
second-largest coffee exporter by volume. Favorable rains and plantings of new
high-yielding varieties in multiple farms in Vietnam's &quot;coffee capital&quot; of Dak
Lak helps explain the higher output, according to Mr Hung, whose company ships
about 100,000 tons of coffee per year.</p>
<p>Record production would further weigh on robusta prices, which have fallen
22 per cent over the past year. Higher output in Brazil and Vietnam will boost
the global coffee surplus to 6.6 million bags, or 396,000 tons, in the 2018-19
season following a balanced market this season, according to Sucden Financial
Ltd. Vietnam's crop will be 1.75 million tons this season, up about 17 per cent
from 1.5 million in 2016-17, the Bloomberg survey shows.</p>
<p>Production in the four provinces of the Central Highlands region, which
accounts for more than 90 per cent of Vietnam's output, will climb more than 4
per cent in 2018-19, according to the median estimate in a separate survey of
provincial agriculture departments in Dak Lak, Gia Lai, Lam Dong and Dak Nong.
SEE ALSO: Ascott opens 2 Citadines serviced residences in Vietnam, including
its biggest property globally</p>
<p>Lam Dong, which represents 24 per cent of Vietnam's coffee area, is
expecting a record crop of 477,000 tons next season, up from 454,000 tons this
year, according to Nguyen Van Son, director of the provincial department of
agriculture and rural development.</p>
<p>Yields at replanted farms will average 3.25 tons a hectare compared with
2.59 tons in non-replanted areas, according to the survey. The four provinces
have replanted coffee trees on more than 85,000 hectares through end-July,
equal to 71 per cent of the target of 120,000 hectares set for the Central
Highlands by 2020.</p>
<p>More than 64,000 hectares still need to be replanted, according to the
survey.</p>
<p>While domestic prices have remained low almost since the start of the
current cropping year, the amount stockpiled by growers is in-line with a year
ago and the five-year average, according to the trader survey. Farmers probably
sold 1.58 million tons by end-July based on the estimated output of 1.75
million tons, or 90 per cent of the 2017-18 crop.</p>
<p>Stocks in warehouses and mills around Ho Chi Minh City are estimated at
223,500 tons as of July 31, according to the median of 10 survey respondents.
That compares with 299,000 tons a year earlier and the five-year average of
265,000 tons.</p>
<p>Shipments probably rose to 1.17 million tons in the first seven months of
the year, 12 per cent more than the same period in 2017, the General Statistics
Office estimates.</p>
<p>The Central Highlands is expected to receive normal rain through September,
according to the National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting.
Precipitation in the fourth quarter, when bean collection normally occurs, is
forecast to be 15 to 30 per cent below average.</p>
<p>The upcoming crop is &quot;developing well&quot; with the harvest expected to start in
early November, RCMA Asia Pte said in a report last month. The company raised
its forecast for the 2018-19 season to 1.92 million tons from 1.83 million to
1.86 million tons.</p>
<p>Bloomberg - August 1st, 2018</p>Vietnam PM says to limit dong devaluation at 2 pct this yearurn:md5:5f0ed1587e7339edb472f4faa41576c12018-08-02T09:40:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishdongeconomy<p>Vietnam will limit its devaluation of its dong currency at 2 percent this
year and stick to its macroeconomic targets despite a slide in the yuan and a
trade war between China and the U.S., its top trading partners, the prime
minister said on Wednesday.</p> <p>Vietnam “needs to stabilize the exchange rate and keep it flexible within a
2 percent band compared with the end of last year,” said Prime Minister Nguyen
Xuan Phuc in a statement on the government website.</p>
<p>Several local economists last month advised the government to devalue the
dong to keep exports competitive amid the devaluation of the yuan and other
regional currencies.</p>
<p>The central bank’s reference exchange rate has fallen by nearly 1.1 percent
against the dollar since the end of last year, according to the State Bank of
Vietnam. On the interbank market, the dong has slid by 2.56 percent.</p>
<p>“We won’t move ahead of the international monetary market as advised by
many, given that there haven’t been any real impacts,” Phuc said, referring to
the impact of the U.S.-China trade war and the yuan devaluation.</p>
<p>July saw an 8 percent erosion in the yuan’s value against the U.S. dollar
since April, marking its worst 4-month fall on record. Losses were driven by
concerns over rising U.S. interest rates, falling Chinese yields and heated
trade tensions.</p>
<p>Vietnam’s stock market, Asia’s top performer with 48 percent gains in 2017,
has fallen 21 percent from its record high in April as investors grow nervous
about the impact of trade tariffs on the global supply chain and its
economy.</p>
<p>Despite the challenges, Phuc, however, said his government will stick to its
growth targets for the year, including GDP growth of 6.7 percent and an
inflation capped at 4 percent.</p>
<p>“The economy is still facing numerous imminent difficulties, challenges and
risks, including risks related to trade, currency and capital flows ...
especially the U.S.-China trade conflict, the U.S.’s tariff policy and Chinese
yuan devaluation,” according to the government statement.</p>
<p>“The general consensus is to maintain macroeconomic stability, better manage
inflation, improve the confidence of the society, of the market and of
businesses,” Phuc said.</p>
<p>China was Vietnam’s largest trading partner last year. The Southeast Asian
country relies heavily on China for materials and equipment for its
labour-intensive manufacturing. Meanwhile, the United States is its largest
export market.</p>
<p>Vietnam runs a huge trade deficit with China and enjoys a trade surplus with
the United States, which Trump has been unhappy about. This has raised fears
that Washington may also slap tariffs on the small country.</p>
<p>By Khanh Vu &amp; Mai Nguyen - Reuters - August 1st, 2018</p>New airline set to join Vietnam's congested skiesurn:md5:96f3db343f670d4ad14f9b746926015b2018-08-01T10:02:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishair carriers<p>Vietnam’s skies are about to get more crowded.</p> <p>With state-owned Vietnam Airlines JSC and budget carrier VietJet Aviation
JSC serving one of the world’s busiest routes, property developer FLC Group JSC
wants a piece of the action with a new airline, operating 37 routes in the
country after its inaugural flight in October.</p>
<p>Called Bamboo Airways, the new airline still needs a government aviation
license before operating and is seeking to capitalize on the nation’s growing
middle class and rapidly expanding tourism industry.</p>
<p>The International Air Transport Association forecasts Vietnam will be among
the world’s top five fastest-growing air travel markets in the next 20 years.
The route between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City is already the world’s
sixth-busiest in terms of passenger numbers last year, according to IATA. The
aviation industry handled 23.6 million passengers during the first half of the
year, a 15 percent increase from the same period last year, according to
Hanoi’s General Statistics Office.</p>
<p>“With a good investment, well-prepared staff and new aircraft, we will
become a giant right after we launch the airline,” Chairman Trinh Van Quyet
said in an interview in his Hanoi office. The Civil Aviation Authority of
Vietnam said the company has met “sufficient conditions” required to be able to
fly in October and the flight license is forthcoming, he added.</p>
<p>Shares of FLC surged as much as 2.5 percent in Wednesday trading while the
benchmark VN Index was little changed. Stock rose 0.9 percent as of 10:05 a.m.
local time, poised for highest level since January.</p>
<p>Bamboo Airways’ proposal is being reviewed, according to a transport
ministry official. Still, the startup airline may struggle to crack Vietnam’s
aviation market, which also includes Vietnam Airlines’s budget carrier unit and
joint venture with Jetstar Pacific.</p>
<p>“Anybody coming into the market now is late,” said Brendan Sobie, a
Singapore-based analyst at CAPA Centre for Aviation. “You have a domestic
market becoming saturated. The international market will probably slow down in
a couple of years.”</p>
<p>Vietnam’s annual domestic seat capacity growth has slowed to single digits
in the past 18 months after posting increases well above 20 percent annually
the four prior years, according to Sobie. International seat capacity growth is
accelerating, reaching about 20 percent a year in the past three years, he
said.</p>
<p>Quyet said Vietnam’s growing middle class and the government’s efforts to
make tourism a major industry will be enough to create room for the new carrier
to succeed.</p>
<p>Bamboo Airways will initially use 20 leased narrow-body and widebody
aircraft, he added. Parent FLC agreed to buy 24 Airbus SE A321neo planes worth
$3.2 billion at list price for Bamboo Airways. In June, it signed a commitment
for 20 Boeing Co. twin-aisle 787-9 Dreamliners with a list price of $5.6
billion. Sixty percent of the capital needed to buy the aircraft will be funded
by financial organizations, Quyet said, adding that the funds were already
arranged. The company expects full delivery of all aircraft by 2022.</p>
<p>The airline, which has registered capital of 1.3 trillion dong ($56
million), is planning 50 international routes in 2019 to countries including
Russia, Germany, France, England, Japan and China, the chairman said.</p>
<p>By Nguyen Kieu Giang - Bloomberg - August 1st, 2018</p>Beijing angry over Taiwanese flag flown by firm in Vietnamurn:md5:ebdd84ccb420d1db1bee04f9064be4322018-08-01T09:26:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishChinadiplomacyTaiwan<p>Hanoi granted permission for Taiwanese firms to fly the flag to distinguish
themselves from mainland companies that were targeted by protesters</p> <p>China is pressuring Vietnam to “correct the mistake” of allowing Taiwanese
firms to fly the flag of the Republic of China at their factories, in its
latest move to curb signs of the self-ruled island’s presence overseas.</p>
<p>The comments came after a Taiwanese furniture manufacturer in Vietnam began
flying the flag, which Taipei claims as its national banner, at its factory
gates to protect itself from anti-China protests.</p>
<p>“There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China,” said
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang on Monday, adding that Beijing
resolutely opposed any form of Taiwan independence separatist activities.</p>
<p>“We have taken up the matter with the Vietnamese side, and they have already
instructed the relevant companies to correct their wrong practices.”</p>
<p>Anti-China protests in Vietnam have embroiled Taiwanese companies on
multiple occasions, most recently in nationwide strikes and demonstrations
against a proposed new special economic zones law in June, which began at a
Taiwanese-owned shoe factory.</p>
<p>Lo Tzu-wen, the president of manufacturer Kaiser 1 Furniture, told Taiwan’s
Central News Agency on Saturday that the Vietnamese government had granted
permission for Taiwanese firms to fly the flag to distinguish themselves from
Chinese companies.</p>
<p>He said that the firm incurred about US$1 million in losses in the 2014
anti-China protest, triggered by the deployment of an oil rig by Beijing in a
disputed region of the South China Sea, killing more than 20 and injuring more
than 100 people.</p>
<p>After the protests, Vietnamese authorities granted tax breaks to Taiwanese
firms as compensation, and explained that Vietnamese citizens could not tell
the difference between Chinese and Taiwanese firms, and had mistakenly targeted
the latter.</p>
<p>The Kaiser 1 Furniture “openly and honourably raises Taiwan’s national flag
every day”, Lo said.</p>
<p>Photos of the factory gate showed two Vietnamese flags in the centre,
flanked by two American flags – the chief market for the furniture manufacturer
– flanked again by two Republic of China flags.</p>
<p>“The approval from the Vietnamese government for Taiwanese firms in the
industrial estate to fly Taiwanese flags in their complexes is unprecedented,”
Lo was quoted as saying. “It is an unexpected outcome from the 2014 violence
against China.”</p>
<p>Representatives at Kaiser 1 Furniture could not confirm whether the flag
still flew at the factory, or whether they had received instructions from the
Vietnamese authorities to take it down.</p>
<p>Beijing has increased efforts to contain what it sees as a rogue island
province, leaving Taiwan with less political clout in global affairs. Just last
week, Beijing forced nearly all global airline carriers to clarify that Taiwan
is part of China.</p>
<p>Taiwan is the fourth-largest foreign investor in Vietnam, according to the
latest statistics from Vietnam’s Ministry of Planning and Investment.</p>
<p>Alexander Huang, an international relations professor at Tamkang University,
said raising the Taiwanese flag was a form of protection for companies from the
island.</p>
<p>“Taiwanese investors must find ways to protect themselves. If Hanoi can’t
find ways to protect them, it will not be good for its economy,” he said.</p>
<p>“Clearly the order from Beijing recently has been coercive diplomacy. China
has given the directive to eliminate Taiwan’s name from the international
arena, to put pressure on them to kneel to China, and let them set the
political relationship.”</p>
<p>By Keegan Elmer -The South China Morning Post - August 1st, 2018</p>Riverside erosion pulls down five houses in northern Vietnamurn:md5:2e80cd2400b436d5229c54b60fc145012018-07-31T09:42:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishaccidenterosion<p>The lives of dozens of families in Hoa Binh are at threat after five houses
collapsed into the Da River on Monday.</p> <p>At around 4 p.m. on Monday, some families in Dong Tien Ward in the northern
province of Hoa Binh, two hours west of Hanoi, heard and saw several cracks
appear on the ground, and alerted the authorities.</p>
<p>Hundreds of police and army personnel were rushed to the site and an
emergency evacuation of five most vulnerable families was carried out.</p>
<p>Around 7 p.m. the same day, the five houses were half-swallowed by the
river.</p>
<p>Officials have blocked off the eroded area and urged residents of 25 other
houses to move to safety immediately, a representative of Hoa Binh’s Steering
Committee on Natural Disaster Prevention, Search and Rescue said.</p>
<p>Nguyen Thanh Huy, a local official, said the authorities have warned of
potential erosion since last year because of landslides.</p>
<p>While some residents blamed it on the Hoa Binh hydropower dam, the largest
in Southeast Asia, closing its flood discharge gates, causing water levels on
the Da River to recede rapidly, officials have said that it is a false
assumption.</p>
<p>Nguyen Hong Son, deputy head of the central steering committee for natural
disaster prevention, said at a news conference that the recent heavy rains in
the northern provinces were responsible for the riverside erosion, Vietnam News
Agency reported.</p>
<p>Land erosion has become a frequent occurrence in many coastal and riverine
provinces in Vietnam over the last decade. Scores of houses have been lost.</p>
<p>According to Vietnam's agriculture ministry, the Mekong Delta, the country's
fruit and rice basket, loses 500 hectares of land to sea and river erosion
every year. Hydroelectric dams in the upstream Mekong and climate change have
been blamed as the main culprits.</p>
<p>By Gia Chinh - VnExpress.net - July 31, 2018</p>Vietnam is reducing carbon emissions by transforming pig waste into energyurn:md5:0458bdfac70f6511a5a4e7f73fc2cf3d2018-07-31T09:32:00+02:00Vietnam aujourd'huiNews in englishagricultureenergy<p>Le Thi Vinh used to put up with a smoky kitchen, filled with soot particles
formed in her muddy stove.</p> <p>That changed in late 2016, when she stopped using firewood but turned to
biogas, generated from the waste of the 46 pigs she raises. The biogas
generated is enough to support a family of four for three meals a day. But it’s
not cheap—the biodigesters needed to make the gas cost about $600 to build,
five times Le’s monthly income of VND 3 million ($130).</p>
<p>Le, a 53-year-old farmer, is among the 7 million living in Hanoi, Vietnam’s
capital and its second most populous city. The city is filled with
diesel-powered motorcycles, some 5 million, choking the air and causing traffic
jams.</p>
<p>But Hanoi is changing. In addition to an ambitious plan to ban motorbikes by
2030, Hanoi is one of 63 provinces and cities in the country that is adopting
biogas for cooking. Le used her own savings and borrowed money from relatives
to build the biodigesters, which are part of a program funded by the Dutch
government that uses Chinese technology. The goal of using biogas is to both
breathe cleaner air and fight against climate change, one of the biggest
challenges of the century.</p>
<p>Like the rest of the world, Vietnam needs to reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions. Animal husbandry contributes around 5% (link in Vietnamese) to
Vietnam’s GDP—the country’s pork output is ranked sixth in the world. Without
proper care, pig waste not only pollutes the environment, but also naturally
degrades to produce methane. Burning methane produces carbon dioxide, which is
a greenhouse gas, but simply letting methane escape is worse, because it is 84
times more powerful in warming the planet than CO2.</p>
<p>Moreover, those not using clean-burning biogas rely mostly on wood-burning
stoves, which release fine carbon particles into the air. These particles are
easily lodged in lungs and can causes diseases, such as lung cancer and heart
disease. Household air pollution from inefficient cooking methods kills nearly
4 million people in poor countries each year.</p>
<p>So Le’s biogas plant is a win-win for fighting against climate change and
cutting indoor pollution. That’s why biogas fits into Vietnam, where 60% still
live in rural areas. In 2003, SNV, a Dutch NGO, began helping Vietnam build
biogas digesters, which store animal waste, in people’s backyards. As of June
this year, the country had approximately 170,000 biodigesters, according to
Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, a program adviser at SNV in Vietnam.</p>
<p>The biodigesters, at an average size of 12 square meters (130 square feet),
are helping Vietnam reduce 1.3 million tons of carbon emissions every year,
according to Nguyen. The country emitted 230 million tonnes (254 million tons)
of carbon emissions last year, accounting for around 0.7% of the world’s total
of 32.5 billion tonnes (35.8 billion tons).</p>
<p>In the first phase of the project, which took place between 2003 and 2012, a
Vietnamese family got a $100 subsidy to build the biodigesters. In the second
phase, between 2013 and 2016, SNV looked at making the whole process more
sustainable, for example, by hiring locals to do the masonry. SNV also worked
with local banks to give loans below market rate for people to build
biodigesters. The organization expects the final phase of the project that
began last year to improve the quality of the installed digesters.</p>
<p>But SNV understands that fluctuations in the pork market will ultimately
determine the success of biodigesters. In 2017, pork prices in the country
halved after China stopped importing live pigs from Vietnam, slowing the
installment of biodigesters, said Nguyen. Hoang Van Tan, a 42-year-old who has
installed at least a thousand biodigesters since becoming a mason seven years
ago, said he used to install 10 biodigesters per month in 2015, but since pork
prices fell, have installed only two to three each month.</p>
<p>Vietnam is facing pressure from both sides. On the one hand, the country’s
energy regulator says Vietnam is likely to face electricity shortages in the
next five years, as demand outstrips supply. To overcome that challenge, it has
been using more fossil fuels, especially coal (pdf, p.2), in its energy mix. On
the other hand, the country needs to cut emissions. One way to achieve that is
to add renewables, such as solar and wind, to the energy mix. If the SNV biogas
project continues to operate and grow, it could set an example for how
renewable projects can be developed with the help of foreign aid in a
developing country.</p>
<p>By Echo Huang - Quartz - July 28, 2018</p>